Review of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) by Zane T — 24 Mar 2010

I don't know what's creepier, John De Lancie's performance as the worst OB/GYN doctor ever or seeing Madeline Zima as a little one, considering her later more "adult" roles on Californication.

This is a movie so bad, it's good. The cast is compiled of a bunch of whatsername actors. Okay, Julianne Moore was still unknown and de Lancie was not known to Trekkies yet. Basically, it's the Nanny from Hell story.

Rebecca De Mornay plays a woman whose creepy husband, played by de Lancie, shoots himself after allegations surface by Annabella Sciorra's character of bad doctor conduct. Basically, he feels her up in an examination room.

Several other patients come forth and he commits suicide. Because of legal problems and that pesky insurance, De Mornay's character faints, but she's pregnant and the docs have to induce labor and the baby dies.

She vows her revenge on Sciorra's character. First off, we never really do know De Mornay's character as anything but a bitch, so when she bites it in the end on those picket fences, which serve a purpose, we don't care.

Secondly, there's no way she would ever know who turned her husband in. No medical board would give her the info and it damn well wouldn't give it to the media. But this is a movie that relies too much on the law of improbability.

Events that transpire in this movie would never happen in some bizarro world that is off its axis and everyone walks around on their hands and slap each other with their feet to say hello. This movie wants you to believe that even though Sciorra's character has gone through a traumatic experience, she would pay any attention to the news following the bad doctor's suicide, especially the newspaper photo feature De Mornay.

Worse, she would check De Mornay's reference when hiring her as a nanny when she would be LIVING in the house. It also asks us to believe that she would suspect her husband of cheating on her with his old flame, played by Moore, who obviously must die because she is a business professional woman and dies in an elaborate greenhouse trap that is intended for the Sciorra character who would notice it from the outside.

Sciorra's character is stupid. She believes that the slow witted handyman Ernie Hudson is molesting her daughter because she finds panties in his tool box. I'd like to think of this movie as an urban legend style of movie about career women.

Turn your eye one minute from your family and this is what happens. Being a successful business woman gets you killed. Here is the kicker, the screenplay was written by a women. She must have wrote it when she had free time from baking cookies and getting her husband's pipe and slippers.

As for the male roles, Matt McCoy sleep walks through a role that asks him to more or less sing Gilbert and Sullivan songs and act like an idiot. Only Hudson is good as Solomon. As for De Mornay, this movie supposedly revitalized her career.

Excuse me? Show me the Academy Awarded nominated roles. This movie suggests that De Mornay's character may want to take on the role of wife but it doesn't nothing with it. Really good bad, bad movie.